Page 7 of Taken by the Twins (Sombra Demons #7)

CHAPTER 7

JEALOUSY

DAMIEN

S ometimes I wonder, if Lucian released me and I went fully demonic, if I would simply stop feeling .

I always have. I feel love and gratitude for Lucian, and desire for my mate, and pride that we are the most revered demons in Sombra apart from Haures. I feel remorse that Lucian can’t use the magic that is his birthright, and appreciation for the way Haures rules Sombra, leaving us to guide him from the shadows.

I don’t see the way my brother does. Not when it comes to our visions. That is his gift. He was the twin born with the magic power and the mage’s purple eyes. I was the spare, without any essence or a reason to survive. I should’ve been left to the shadows, and I would’ve been if—even as a newborn spawn—my twin didn’t instinctively share his essence with me through our twin bond.

For nearly three millennia, I’ve tried to convince him to take it back. I don’t want to end my existence, but if it meant Lucian would have a better one? I’d sever our twin bond in an instant, giving him all of the essence that we shared.

I don’t see—I feel. I sense things that are going to happen, and I explain them only using the way I experience them. I’m not like Lucian or most other seers. They open their minds’ eyes and see. I can’t, but between the two of us combining our unique abilities, we’ve become the most well-regarded visionaries in Sombra.

We are the doppelseers.

We are twins.

We share. Our essence. Our abilities. Our home… and our mate.

I always knew we would. Like Lucian, I looked forward to taking our female and making her ours. Even up until the moment that the red I sensed became Tandy , I was prepared to pleasure her alongside my brother.

But then I saw how much she was drawn to Lucian. How she flinched away from me, finding solace in his embrace before she recognized that he was my twin. Something shifted in that moment, and I could tell— I just knew —that, once again, I was taking something from Lucian that should belong to only him.

Tandy and Lucian deserve one another. He’ll keep her safe and loved, and she’ll make it so that he isn’t alone...

Sombra demons only have essence to give to one mate for a reason. The bond stretches between a male and a female, not a female and two male twins with barely enough essence between them . Tandy is destined for Lucian. He doesn’t see it yet, but I know.

She will choose. And though she laid her hands on me, placing her lips against mine, I know that when she does choose… she will not choose me.

I accept that. I don’t know if Lucian will, but he is as helpless to ignore the pull of a mate bond as any other Sombra demon.

I can. I must. I feel so much, and I’ve learned to quiet the emotions when I can. Otherwise, I would take off into the shadows, letting the darkness silence them completely for me.

If I did, I would be demonic. I know that as well. I accept that, too. I don’t want to lose my brother, but it would be selfish to take what I want when Lucian deserves his one true mate far more than I do.

He’s upstairs with her now. Through our twin bond, I can sense him prowling carefully around Tandy, getting close without spooking her. As if he could. Her essence has taken root inside of both of us; though it doesn’t replace what Lucian provides for me, I have it, and I know everything about our female.

Which is why I’m sure that she will be Lucian ’s female.

I want her. I’d be lying if I tried to claim I didn’t, and when she pressed her lips to mine, the intensity with which I wanted to hoist her up, pet her cunt, and thrust my cock up inside of her so that we would never be separated terrified me.

I am one of the doppelseers. I fear nothing—except for a red-haired female whose human magic might be powerful enough to heal me, or to shatter me.

Tandy would’ve welcomed me. She gave us her essence, while we kept ours, so it shouldn’t be the mate sickness. I know better than to blame my need for her on being sick myself. The mate sickness doesn’t come on that quickly for us demons. No. My desire to claim Tandy has to do with knowing she’s fated to be mine…

But she’s also meant to be Lucian’s. And if Tandy needs a male to pleasure her, it should be him.

I will live vicariously through my brother. Our twin bond is unique. No one else in Sombra has one, so I can’t say for sure why it works how it does, but unless we close each other off, I know what he’s feeling. Obviously. That is what Damien does, even when he’d rather not.

I can’t not feel.

Right now? I feel jealous .

Of Lucian? I’ve never been jealous of Lucian. He is the good twin. I am the mistake. And, yet, I’m grateful that he shares himself with me. I would begrudge him nothing. When he went to check on Tandy and their conversation turned into him tasting our mate’s delicious cunt, I got to experience it so vividly, I swear I taste her musk on my lips.

It affected me so much that, the moment he first swiped his tongue through her cunt, gathering the moisture and swallowing it as if it was the finest demon wine, I wanted him to do it again. I sent the order through our twin bond, letting him know that I was with them even if I couldn’t bring myself to actually join them, and when I ordered Lucian to mate her with his tongue, he did—and I nearly exploded.

We have never mated a female before. The doppelseers were never sexual creatures, though in our earlier centuries, we would sit and plot and rub our cocks in unison as we imagined what our future mate would be like. We never stroked each other—the only time our cocks will touch is when we’re claiming our mate together—but finding pleasure with my twin was like finding it with myself.

I am Lucian.

He is me.

We are the doppelseers, and as soon as we first sensed our female would be a legendary mortal, we made the conscious decision never to partake in casual mating with any demoness we couldn’t share our essence with.

Our cocks were made for Tandy. I can’t give her mine, but as Lucian uses his shadowy claw to explore her cunt the same time as he nibbles her most intimate area with his fangs, I disappear the shadows that are acting as my coverings.

My cock is already ready to mate. Hard and aching, I jolt in place when my fist squeezes the tip. It wants to find Tandy’s cunt and claim it, but since Lucian is currently pleasuring her while imagining doing the exact same thing, I keep my feet planted on the floor below Tandy’s quarters as I start to buck my hips.

Closing my eyes, I tighten my grip, imagining that I have her under me even though I’m standing, and the moans whispering from the second floor down to me are made for Lucian. For the moment, at least, I can pretend they’re mine.

My solid hand stutters over my length. A frisson of pleasure mixed with pain has me gritting my teeth, fangs biting down past my bottom lip so that I don’t howl and disturb them.

Lifting my hand to my mouth, I lick it, then grab my cock again. The friction eases, but I can’t help but think what it would be like to have Tandy’s mouth on me the same way that Lucian’s mouth is currently on her .

Is that done? In Sombra, most mated demons don’t talk about what they do in the shadows with their demonesses. It’s possible that someone like Apollyon of Nuit might take Lilith by one of her dainty horns, guide her to the floor, and slip his cock between her fangs. I know that my instincts all but raged at me to get my mouth on Tandy’s cunt, or to get my cock inside her anyway it could—including her mouth.

If she offered, would I have succumbed to my temptations? I’d be good. I’d be careful. She is a wee thing. I am more than two heads higher than she is. I would have to kneel to feed Tandy my cock, or she’d have to stay standing, but if I was too big, I could fix that?—

Suddenly, I have an image of Tandy doing just what I’m thinking of. My beautiful female on her knees, all that lovely red hair tossed over her shoulder as she takes a cock in her hand. It’s tip is bulbous and red, though not as deep a color as a Sombran male, and not so thick that she struggles to wrap her lips around the head, taking the first few inches past her teeth.

I see it as if I am Tandy, and for a moment, I wonder why now—now of all moments—my visions are as clear as Lucian’s. Then it hits me: I’m not seeing a vision of the future. This is a glimpse of the past.

Of Tandy ’s past.

She is mortal. Over the past few decades, my twin and I have discussed what mating a human female is like. Haures took his duchess more than thirty human years ago, and though he is also close-lipped about what they do in the shadows, he made one thing very clear.

Humans are different from demons in many ways. A demon’s life is both limitless and endless. When the mate we choose will be ours for the rest of our existence, it is worth waiting as long as it takes to find that one true mate the gods have given us. Humans don’t have one mate. They have plenty, and only if they offer themselves to a demon with the mate’s promise will they form a mate bond.

I have never known a female before Tandy. Lucian, neither. But Tandy… Haures warned us that we might not be her first lover, only that we must be satisfied to be the last.

I didn’t care if she was claimed by another male. Once she called Lucian and me to her, she was ours. We would be her future, but I don’t have enough essence of my own to keep from seeing her past.

Because that is what just happened. I see a male that used to hold Tandy’s heart, her essence revealing that she used her mouth on him the same way I hoped she might use on me one day.

I understand my jealousy now. I am not jealous of my twin.

I am jealous of… of…

Jared Turner .

His name is Jared Turner.

A worthless human male who held Tandy’s heart in his hand, then crushed it.

I keep seeing his face. From the moment I first took Tandy’s essence inside of me, this one male has haunted me. I didn’t understand why at first, and to preserve the little bit of sanity I have remaining, I didn’t pursue it.

Lucian told me the same thing that Haures did: that Tandy will have a past of her own, but that shouldn’t affect our future. And yet, as my twin finally crossed the chasm between us and found a way to make Tandy his at last, I can’t help but stew over this one male.

A snake, I remember. Dagon’s mate inferred that our Tandy was less than honorable—and I’m still offended about that to this day, despite her aid in helping us bring Tandy to Sombra—but our female is perfect.

This Jared creature is no better than a groundcrawler.

What makes matters so much worse is that Tandy… her feelings for this male are complex. Added to my unfortunate ability to experience everything more potently than other demons, her essence tells me that she loved him once and struggles to forget him even now.

He is not Tandy’s only other lover. Suddenly aware that I’m seeing her memories, feeling her emotions, I ignore enough of them to keep myself from watching her with countless other human males. It matters not to me that they pleasured my Tandy because none of them left any profound impact on her or her essence.

None except for this Jared .

Lucian needs his mate. Until Tandy accepts our essence and allows him to give her the mate’s promise, she can conceivably leave us. She is smart. She is resourceful. She has kin in this realm who, if she asked, would lead her back to the human world—without us.

Not even our secret alliance with Haures would allow Lucian and me to chase after Tandy to the human realm if she rejects our bond before it is finalized.

So, to convince her to stay and be Lucian’s forever, there cannot be anything tying Tandy to the human world. Up until this moment, I didn’t believe there was. She was as lonely as us doppelseers are, and she yearned for a fresh start.

Her ‘new year’.

How can she do that when she clings to a male from her past?

A male who hurt her?

Reaching through my twin bond, I see if my brother has noticed that my last thread of control when it comes to our Tandy has snapped . I have no essence. It is impossible for me to block him the same way as I tried to keep from seeing more about my mate than any devoted male should. I know Lucian. His will is strong, and he would never allow himself to see any other males pleasuring his mate… except for his brother.

I cannot do that, not completely, but I can make sure that Tandy is never hurt by that Jared creature again.

Lucian is distracted. I sense his desire, and his anticipation. He has finished tasting Tandy. His body is coiled, needing release, and though I didn’t find completion in my fist, I know that Tandy is about to welcome Lucian into her body—and, unlike me, he has no reason to resist.

My twin will never be more distracted than he is at this moment. Just as I can sense him guiding Tandy back toward the large nest we prepared for the three of us to share, I accept I will never join them.

It’s better that a male on the cusp of turning fully demonic does not.

But I’m not fully demonic yet . I have an ounce of essence left that I claim as mine because Lucian insists it is. That, added to what we took from Tandy, gives me the ability to re-open the portal to the human world that we took after she manifested us with the matefinder spell.

Haures will not approve. He could possibly even sentence me to the shadows regardless, and even our hidden partnership over the ages might not be enough to protect me.

I do not care. For Lucian, I’ll do anything.

For Tandy, I’ll do even more than that.

Including going to the human realm on my own and confronting the male who once owned her heart…